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Residential broadband options such as cable and digital subscriber lines are growing in popularity. However, evidence suggests that urban areas are receiving the majority of infrastructure investment, thereby leaving many rural locations with few options for broadband access. With access to telecommunication infrastructure becoming an increasingly important component to local economic development, issues of infrastructure equity are significant. This paper explores telecommunication equity and its effect on economic development by addressing the impact of geography on infrastructure investment and growth. A comprehensive database of broadband service providers and data from the Ecom-Ohio project (http://www.ecom-ohio.org), are used to explore broadband access options in the state of Ohio by examining the characteristics of market demand that are driving cable and digital subscriber line infrastructure investment. In addition, this paper develops an explanatory framework for identifying key market characteristics indicative of demand for residential broadband services through the use of statistical models and a geographic information system. Results suggest that income, education, age, location, and competition from alternative broadband platforms influence digital subscriber line infrastructure investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State and local economic development efforts have grown during the last three decades in the United States. Some public incentives for companies may be effective, including those for high unemployment areas; others may be wasteful, especially if they retain corporations that merely threaten to leave. As companies increasingly expect incentives, however, governments find themselves in a ‘race to the bottom’– the only way to remain competitive is to offer more. Having identified arguments for and against incentives, this paper considers the prospects for addressing wasteful competition, including, in the absence of Congressional action, the US Supreme Court's application of the Commerce Clause to strike down incentives that discriminate against interstate commerce. A review of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of incentives for the DaimlerChrysler Toledo Jeep plant finds that the Commerce Clause is not a solution for wasteful competition. Another model to consider is the European Union's regulation of incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1996, Chrysler announced plans to build a replacement plant within 50 miles of its existing Toledo Jeep facilities. In theory, this presented an opportunity for alternatives to expensive ‘all or nothing’ individual competition; in practice, Toledo and other governments in the northwest Ohio/southeast Michigan region entered into the usual cutthroat contest when transnational corporations solicit incentive offers from across the United States. Chrysler's desire to remain within the region provides a unique context for analysing the opportunities and challenges associated with regional co-operation as an alternative to individual competition. In investigating the extent to which localities can co-operate and reduce wasteful incentives, this paper also identifies how the opportunities for such co-operation are limited. The research highlights the need to better incorporate this kind of region – without internal political coherence despite locational proximity – into conceptualisations and empirical analyses of regional co-operation, particularly with respect to issues of scale and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of state economic development incentives on the growth of 366 Ohio manufacturing and nonmanufacturing establishments that launched major expansions between 1993 and 1995. Growth is measured as the actual employment change that occurred in these establishments and as the employment growth announced when expansions were launched. Empirical findings indicate that incentives have very little (or even a negative) effect on actual growth and they have a substantial positive effect on announced growth. Findings also suggest that establishments that received incentives overestimated their announced employment targets more than establishments that did not receive incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major problem of base theory is the lack of an acceptable and objective technique to identify the export and service employment in the local economy. In this article, researchers propose and test a new approach to handle this problem. The findings as presented in this paper further confirm researchers belief that the Location Quotient approach is not an appropriate technique to measure and forecast the economic base of a region. This conclusion is in complete agreement with other studies that have also evaluated this technique." However, researchers go beyond these criticisms and findings by presenting a new approach for conducting economic base analysis. The new model provides the regional analyst a more objective tool for conducting economic base analysis and it can show him how national growth may constrain local growth despite his efforts to boost local employment. Another unique characteristic of this new model is that it can be easily linked to national quarterly models of the U.S. economy such as the Wharton or Brookings model.

The article presents an analysis of neighborhood change in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1980s using two-wave panel design and causal modeling. Studies have shown that poverty predicts rates of births to unmarried mothers, juvenile delinquency, crime and drug-related problems in urban neighborhoods. Economic deprivation theory postulates that high rates of juvenile delinquency, crime and drug-related problems are associated with poor neighborhoods and suggests that a rise in poverty increases a sense of economic injustice, which results in higher rates of violence. In this article authors study interrelationships among neighborhoods' poverty levels and types of social conditions described in the urban poverty literature by examining factors related to neighborhood poverty in Cleveland at the beginning and end of the 1980s. It demonstrates the usefulness of panel analysis using LISREL (Linear Structural Relations) version 7.2. It reports that the Cleveland economy grew steadily throughout the 1950s, 1960s and much of the 1970s, with the emphasis on manufacturing enterprises. In the early 1980s both Cleveland and its suburbs lost a large number of manufacturing jobs either permanently or to the furthest suburbs. In the city of Cleveland 90,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between 1979 and 1983. Along with jobs loss, Cleveland lost population and investment in new housing mostly to its suburban areas.

The author examines change agents, agendas, and processes involved in community-based efforts to promote collaborative manufacturing in Cleveland, Athens, and Toledo, Ohio. The goals are to redefine relationships of firms with competitors, customers, and community entities and to remake institutions so as to support small firms. Contributing factors include the threat that communities will be relegated to the periphery, new pressures on small firms to design products Tor diverse customers, the importation of network models by stale governments, and the ability of community-based organizations to translate these models to resonate with local constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]